Honduran teen makes last bid in Chicago immigration court to stay in U.S.

Maryori Urbina-Contreras, who made the trek from Honduras to the U.S. as a 13-year-old, will make her final case to stay in this country before a Chicago immigration judge Feb. 28, 2018. If statistics tell a story, the odds aren't in her favor. (Erin Hooley / Chicago Tribune)

Maryori Urbina-Contreras, who made the trek from Honduras to the U.S. as a 13-year-old, will make her final case to stay in this country before a Chicago immigration judge Feb. 28, 2018. If statistics tell a story, the odds aren't in her favor. (Erin Hooley / Chicago Tribune)

Elvia MalagonChicago Tribune

Like most teens, Maryori Urbina-Contreras talks about her life in the future tense: getting her driver’s license in a few more months, finding a part-time job, taking senior year classes at Waukegan High School in English now that she has a command of the language.

For the Honduras-born girl, who is living in the country illegally, reaching those milestones in the United States is far from certain. Her fate is in the hands of a Chicago immigration judge who could decide as soon as Wednesday whether she’ll be granted her request for asylum or be deported. Four years ago, the now 17-year-old fled Honduras by herself — part of a wave of minors escaping violence in mostly Central American countries — in search of a safe place to live. Her story was chronicled a year later, in 2015, in the Tribune.

What’s expected to be her final immigration hearing Wednesday comes as debate rages on the issue of who should be allowed to come to — or stay in — this country. President Donald Trump has pushed for creating a wall at the Mexico border and ending the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, commonly known as DACA, which allowed “Dreamers” — those who arrived in this country when they were minors without documentation — to work and go to school with a low risk of deportation.

Maryori doesn’t meet the “Dreamer” qualifications; the program requires her to have arrived in this country at age 16 or younger and to have lived here continuously since 2007. She is making a bid for asylum, a tough argument in the court system, considering Hondurans have faced a 78 percent denial rate nationwide. Her attorney argues the teen can’t live in her home country because of the incessant gang violence that led to her witnessing and becoming the target of violent robberies.

But advocates for immigration reduction, like the Federation for American Immigration Reform, argue that young people in the country illegally clog up the courts with asylum claims that further delay their deportation to their country of origin.

“The whole system creates an incentive for people to come here, to send their kids here,” said Ira Mehlman, spokesman for the group. “In many cases, minors, 16 or 17 years old, come here understanding that they will be released to relatives.”

While her immigration case, like most, has moved at a sluggish pace through the court system, Maryori has made a new life for herself, even seeing her dream of reuniting with her mother come true. The girl’s mother left Honduras when Maryori was a small child, and Maryori traveled to the United States to find her. Today, the teen, her mother and two younger sisters share a home in the northern suburb. The thought of leaving is painful enough, but the thought of what awaits her is downright frightening, she says.

“I can’t return to my country because of all the danger that is happening,” she said in Spanish. “I could be assassinated in my country because of the situations that are happening, and here I’m safe from harm with my family.”

Teenage life in Waukegan

One day in 2014, Maryori walked out of the home she shared with her aunt in Tegucigalpa, Honduras, as if it was an ordinary school day. But the then-13-year-old girl had secretly tucked into her backpack a change of clothes, a rosary and about $20. She was going to head to the U.S. to find her mother.

She tagged along with a group — mostly mothers and other teens — that traveled more than 1,600 miles through Honduras, Guatemala and Mexico in what she estimates took two weeks. They took buses, slept on floors and sometimes went without eating. She crossed into the U.S. near Roma, Texas, where she was detained by Customs and Border Patrol agents and given a notice to appear in immigration court.

Maryori Urbina-Contreras is one of 68,000 unaccompanied children who flooded across the southwest border of the United States, causing a humanitarian crisis in 2014. She had risked everything when she left Honduras and traveled alone in a desperate attempt to reunite with her mother in Waukegan.

She had pictured her mother, Tania Contreras, living in Chicago, a bustling city filled with beautiful homes and a large Ferris wheel, an apparent reference to Navy Pier. But her mother actually lived about an hour away in suburban Waukegan, and that’s where Maryori set off to — and made a home as her immigration case wound its way through court. Still, it felt like a vacation, if only briefly, she recalled.

“I felt happy, finally I’m in a peaceful place, I’m going to receive my studies,” Maryori said in Spanish, the language she is still most comfortable speaking. “But at the same time, I had come here illegally. It was a point I never got out of my head.”

Still, in the past four years she’s traveled to Capitol Hill, granted television news interviews — making the case for her and others fleeing violence to stay in this country. She also participated in a weekly religious service for immigrant families at a satellite of Lincoln United Methodist Church. Next year, she hopes to pick a college that will help her pursue a nursing career.

After school, she’s most often in the bedroom she shares with her sisters that has one closet, a vanity decorated with roses and signs from the League of United Latin American Citizens, a group helping the family. The family calls her by her middle name, Nicole.

The screen of her laptop illuminated Maryori’s face one recent weeknight as she watched an episode of “La Rosa de Guadalupe,” a popular Spanish-language drama. Her sister, Diana Ruiz, was next to her munching on chips and scrolling through her phone when their youngest sister, Valeria Ruiz, stormed into the room to show off a drawing. Their attention turned to a comedy skit about a nail salon on Diana’s phone. Valeria leaned on top of Maryori to watch. Soon, the sisters were sorting through nail polish colors as Maryori continued watching the show.

“If you stain my bed, you are cleaning it,” Maryori said in Spanish to the giggling sisters.

She’s hardly alone

On a recent cold Saturday night, the family joined other immigrant families on a pilgrimage through downtown Waukegan on the feast day of Our Lady of Suyapa, the patron saint of Honduras. The group, carrying a figurine of the saint in a gold-painted box, stopped at an intersection and Maryori was handed a microphone.

“Virgin of Suyapa, we pray for the protection of all the Central American refugees who fled from their countries,” she said in Spanish. “Please keep them safe here in the USA with their families. Lord, hear our prayer.”

“Amen,” the crowd chanted.

There were 2,311 people who identified as Hondurans living in Waukegan, about 2 percent of the suburb’s population, according to the 2010 census. A little more than 5,000 of Honduran descent were living in Chicago, less than 1 percent of the city's total population, according to the U.S. Census Bureau.

Maryori was among 57,496 unaccompanied minors who migrated — largely from Central America — to the United States during fiscal year 2014, according to the Office of the Administration for Children and Families. That’s a 133 percent jump from the previous year. The number of unaccompanied minors crossing into the U.S. from its southern border fell 31 percent from fiscal year 2016 to 2017, when nearly 41,000 entered the U.S.

Daysi Diaz-Strong, a doctoral candidate at the University of Chicago, said her research shows adolescents willing to take a chance to cross the border on their own — without documentation — are desperate and likely think it’s the only way to fulfill their dreams.

“So they are thinking about ‘who am I? What do I want to become?’ And they are doing that within their context in their countries of origin — there’s poverty, there’s violence, lack of opportunity, lack of jobs, maybe family is not there because they are here,” Diaz-Strong said. “And so they are trying to explore these questions with very few opportunities there, so in order for them to sort of reach these development milestones, something very normal that all adolescents do, prompts them to migrate.”

In Honduras, Maryori witnessed a fatal armed robbery, she was robbed and the home where she lived with an aunt was burglarized. Her attorney, Christopher Helt, argues the Honduran government can’t protect her from gang violence it turns a blind eye to.

While Honduras has reported recent decreases in the nation’s murder rate, the district that includes Tegucigalpa still recorded more than 900 homicides in 2016, according to data compiled by the Universidad Nacional Autonoma de Honduras.

Class plays a role in how violence reaches Hondurans. Those with economic means can live in a gated community and hire private security, while poor residents face the brunt of the violence, said Alan Zarychta, an assistant professor at the University of Chicago.

Seeking asylum

While her case initially landed in immigration court, Maryori made her first formal request for asylum through the office of the United States Citizenship and Immigration Services. Those seeking asylum have to establish past persecution or a fear of future persecution because of race, religion, nationality, membership in a particular social group or political opinion.

In August 2015, the asylum office determined Maryori had not met that criteria, offering no explanation, and sent the case back to immigration court, where it’s now pending.

It's not unusual for immigration cases to take years to be processed. In Chicago, cases like Maryori's jumped from 349 days in fiscal year 2016 to 545 days as of December 2017, according to the Transactional Records Access Clearinghouse at Syracuse University, which compiles immigration data across the country.

Her attorney, Helt, argues that Maryori is a candidate for asylum because as a girl she is more likely to be the target of violence if she returns to Honduras. Another young girl he represented whose story was similar was granted relief, he said. And in a court filing, Helt outlined three other cases of Central Americans who fled because of gang violence, and each were granted asylum.

Maryori’s final hearing this week will determine if she’ll receive a green card, meaning she can become a permanent resident, or if she will have to return to Honduras.

Statistics show her odds of winning the case increase because she has an attorney, but immigration judges denied 61 percent of asylum cases in fiscal year 2017, according to an analysis of court records by Syracuse University. From fiscal years 2012 to 2017, Hondurans seeking asylum faced a 78 percent denial rate.

In early February, Maryori met with Helt in a conference room overlooking downtown Evanston. Her mother and Julie Contreras, an immigration-rights activist, sat with her.

“Have you heard of a trial?” Helt asked.

“Yes, it scares me,” Maryori said in Spanish as she got teary-eyed.

“Don’t be afraid,” Helt said.

The hearing, he explained, will be like a trial in which they’ll detail her life story, including threats back home and what she fears could happen. He used a whiteboard to show the layout of the courtroom, using smiley faces to lighten the mood.

“You tell the story to one person,” Helt said. “Not to a jury of 12 people, not to President Trump.”